Netduino at the Bay Area Maker Faire

Wed, 16 May 2012 20:20:20 GMT

If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, or even feel like making a quick weekend tripI highly recommend checking out the Maker Faire this weekend in San Mateo, CA ( www.makerfaire.com ). I’ve posted a write up of some of my suggestions on what to bring...(read more)

What to bring to the Maker Faire?

Wed, 16 May 2012 05:13:40 GMT

The 2012 Bay Area Maker Faire is coming up this weekend in San Mateo, California. It will be about a mile from the offices of DotNetNuke Corporation so we will be heading over on Saturday as a family, and then I will likely go again on Sunday.

All the info about the faire can be found at http://www.makerfaire.com

After having attended last year, I have a couple of tips if this is your first time going. Here’s a list of what to bring, along with an explanation for each item.

1. Bike – Ride a bicycle to the Maker Faire, you can save $5 on your ticket, and get access to the bike valet, plus you’ll be doing something good for the environment, get to avoid some of the traffic, and the parking last year was kind of nuts. I think I parked about 1/2 a mile away in a building’s parking garage.
2. Cash – You will find so many things you want to buy, it will be better to have cash on hand Bring lots of cash if you want to buy something like a 3D printer. I really wanted to last year, and will want to again this year, but the budget just won’t allow it yet. Maybe later this year. You should definitely check out the MakerShed, I did end up spending way more money than I planned last year after making a long stop there. There are also plenty of food options on site as well.
3. Backpack – There will be plenty of swag to pick up, things to see, things to buy, have a backpack or something else to haul all your scores back.
4. Camera – Screw it, you won’t need a camera, you need 3 cameras! I think I had 3 last year, seriously. I had my GoPro mounted on my head (video down below), my Motorola Xoom and my Motorola Droid. This year I plan on taking the GoPro, along with multiple batteries and SD cards, my Galaxy Nexus, and perhaps my Canon 5D Mark II. What kind of things might you take pictures of? Cupcake Go-karts, R2-D2, need I say more?
5. Hat – It will be sunny and most likely sunny, and while a lot of Maker Faire is inside, even more of it is outside. Though if you don’t want to bring a hat there was a pretty cool custom leather hat stand (steam punk style) last year, perhaps I’ll break down and buy one this year.
6. Family – I went to Maker Faire 2011 expecting it to be a male dominated tech event. Boy was I wrong. As soon as I walked in I regretted not bringing the wife and baby along. This year I won’t make that mistake, and the baby being 19 months now should definitely get a kick out of it. If you’re a single male, don’t let that scare you, it will be well worth attending for you as well.
7. Time – There is so much at the Maker Faire, be sure to give yourself all day. I got there last year right as they opened up, and spend a good 4 or 5 hours there before I was baked and ready to go home. I’m in much better shape this year, hoping to last all day both days!
8. Water – it may be warm, bring something to drink, preferably in a refillable container

What to expect at Maker Faire?

I seriously can’t even begin to describe what all you will see at the Maker Faire. Big mechanical dragons spitting flames, little Android robots, R2-D2 robots, steam punk hipsters, the Rally Fighter open source car, Wooden Bicycles, Rocks as big as a car that you can move,

Here are two videos from last year’s Maker Faire

and a time lapse of my day (at least most of it)

Come speak at DNN World 2012 in Orlando, FL

Wed, 02 May 2012 16:03:05 GMT

We’re in full swing for planning and preparations for DNN World 2012 this October in Orlando Florida. Our call for speakers is open for a couple of more days (5/5 I believe). The conference is 10/11-12 with pre-conference training on 10/10. More details...(read more)

Getting ready for DotNetNuke Module Development

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 19:21:59 GMT

Tomorrow morning I’ll be delivering one of our free DotNetNuke Explained web seminars, the 4th in our series of 6. This seminar is for Basic Module Development, in which I will show you how to quickly get up and running with custom module development for DotNetNuke.

If you haven’t signed up yet, you still can, go to the registration link. After the web seminar is delivered and posted online that same registration link will allow you to watch the recording.

In order to get up and running with module development it is best to have your module development environment configured. Due to the seminar only being an hour I will be jumping in after my development environment is already setup, but this blog post will point you to the resources necessary to get your own environment setup and running.

Rather than regurgitate information that is already posted, this post will simply point you to the appropriate resources.

We’ve got a thorough page in the DotNetNuke Wiki about Setting Up Your Development Environment. If you would like to try to follow along with the live web seminar, or the recording after the seminar, please first follow the steps outlined in that Wiki entry.

I will have completed all of the above steps on that Wiki page prior to the web seminar tomorrow morning.

Useful Links from Web Seminar

From there, I will do a few things in the webinar, I will refer to these links live, but finding them in the blog post will be helpful to many of you.

I will begin by downloading and installing the MSI for the MSBuild Community Tasks project.

Then I will be downloading and installing the custom C# project template from http://christoctemplate.codeplex.com, you can also find a VB.net version of the template as well.

If you would like to customize the templates prior to use you can find instructions for installing and customizing the project templates on this wiki page. I will not be customizing the template in the seminar.

After template installation I will walk you through the process of creating a project based on the template, the location as to where this project will live, and how it will work within DotNetNuke. We will make a few changes to the project to get it configured for our environment, then step through the process of packaging and installing the module within DotNetNuke.

From there we will actually add some functionality to the module utilizing Module Settings and code in our View and Edit controls.

For another approach to module development be sure to check out the Task Manager series of module development videos on the DotNetNuke Video Library.

Simple Netduino Go Tutorial Flashing RGB LEDs with a potentiometer

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 16:48:49 GMT

In case you missed the announcement on 4/4, the guys and Secret Labs, along with other members of the Netduino Community have come out with a new platform called Netduino Go. Head on over www.netduino.com for the introduction forum post.

This post is how to quickly get up and running with your Netduino Go, based on Chris Walker’s getting started forum post, with some enhancements that I think will make it easier to get up and running, as Chris’ post unfortunately leaves a few things out.

Hardware

I ordered a variety of hardware when I ordered my Netduino Go here’s a list, though in this tutorial I’ll only be using a small portion of this.

1. (1) Netduino Go
2. (1) Shield Base Module
3. (2) RGB LED Module
4. (4) Button Module
5. (1) Potentiometer Module

One thing to keep in mind with the hardware is that each module needs a cable to be able to connect to the Go, but the Go only comes with two cables. I did order a 5 pack of cables as well, and up until about 2 minutes ago thought I left them at the office, only to realize I do have them at home, which is going to change the rest of this tutorial.

Software

1. Visual Studio 2010
2. .NET MicroFramework V4.2

First and foremost, you need to install the .NET MicroFramework 4.2 and Visual Studio 2010 (not sure if express will work). Chris’ post assumes that you already have .Net MicroFramework V4.2 installed. You can download this from Codeplex though to be honest I don’t know if you need the PK or the SDK, I installed both.

What will the project do?

Before we get into actually creating the project, what will it be? Well this is just something simple, nothing useful, but hopefully gives you an idea how to work with the Netduino Go.

We’re going to use the Netduino Go, one Button Module, one Potentiometer Module, and 3 RGB LED Modules. The button will be used to turn the system on and off. The RGB LEDs will blink in succession, one Red, one Green and one Blue (I realized during the development that I only had 2 RGB LED Modules, so I removed Blue from the code with comments, I ordered two more they should be here Friday. The potentiometer will be used to control the timing of the light succession.

Project Creation

For the first part of this you can follow Chris Walker’s instructions posted in the thread, copied here for ease of reading.

To manually create a project for your Netduino Go:

• Download and unzip the attached assemblies.
• Create a new .NET Micro Framework "Console Application"
• Add the references "GoBus.dll" and "SecretLabs.NETMF.Hardware.NetduinoGo.dll" to your project. You'll need to use the "Browse..." tab for the moment.
• Add the references to the go!modules you'd like to use (NetduinoGo.Button.dll, Nwazet.Relay.dll, etc.)
• At the top of your project, add the line:

using SecretLabs.NETMF.Hardware.NetduinoGo;

From here I’ll switch out of Chris’ examples and provide my own code.

Plug your NetduinoGo into the MicroUsb cable attached to your computer. It might take your PC a few moments to find the drivers.

Right click on the Project properties and be sure to change your target framework to 4.2. You’ll also want to change the Deployment options on the .NET Micro Framework tab in the project properties, Transport = USB and Device = NetduinoGo_NetduinoGo.

The first thing we’re going to do is initialize the objects we’re going to use.

static NetduinoGo.Button button = new NetduinoGo.Button(GoSockets.Socket1); 
// this button will start/stop the flashing

static NetduinoGo.RgbLed redLed = new NetduinoGo.RgbLed(GoSockets.Socket2); 
// this is the socket for the first LED


static NetduinoGo.RgbLed greenLed = new NetduinoGo.RgbLed(GoSockets.Socket3); 
// this is the socket for the second LED


//static NetduinoGo.RgbLed blueLed = new NetduinoGo.RgbLed(GoSockets.Socket4); 
// this is the socket for the third LED

public static bool currentState = false; // keep track of if the button was pressed to turn it on, or off
static NetduinoGo.Potentiometer pt = new Potentiometer(GoSockets.Socket5); 
// the potentiometer to control the speed of the LEDs

We’re going to have a single method that turns off all the LEDs, likely not the most efficient approach, but it will do what I want. We also provide the button handler event.

//method to turn off all the LEDs
static void AllOff()
{
    redLed.SetColor((byte)0, (byte)0, (byte)0);
    greenLed.SetColor((byte)0, (byte)0, (byte)0);
    //blueLed.SetColor((byte)0, (byte)0, (byte)0);
}

//button handler
static void Button_ButtonReleased(object sender, bool buttonState)
{
    currentState = !currentState; //set the state to the opposite of whatever we were before
}

The Main() for the project is a bit longer, but nothing too complex. Basically we wire up the button handler, make sure to start in the off state, and then setup our While loop. Because we’re running on a device, this loop While(true) will just loop forever.

Inside of the loop we’re going to check if we should be on or off, if on, we go through and pass through each RGB LED Module to turn it on, then sleep for a moment, how long is based on the potentiometer, and then turn off the LEDs, move on to the next color.

public static void Main()
{

    button.ButtonReleased += new NetduinoGo.Button.ButtonEventHandler(Button_ButtonReleased); 
// setup the button handler

    currentState = false; //make sure we start with it off

    while (true) //we're using a device, it will never end
    {
        if (currentState) // see if we should be displaying the LEDs or not
        {
            redLed.SetColor((byte)255, (byte)0, (byte)0); // turn on the red LED
            System.Threading.Thread.Sleep((int)(100 * pt.GetValue())); 
// pause for a moment based on the potentiometer state

            AllOff(); // turn off all LEDs

            greenLed.SetColor((byte)0, (byte)255, (byte)0); // turn on the green LED
            System.Threading.Thread.Sleep((int)(100 * pt.GetValue())); 
// pause for a moment based on the potentiometer state

            AllOff(); // turn off all LEDs

            //blueLed.SetColor((byte)0, (byte)0, (byte)255); // turn on the blue LED
            //System.Threading.Thread.Sleep((int)(100 * pt.GetValue())); 

// pause for a moment based on the potentiometer state


            //AllOff(); // turn off all LEDs
        }
    }
}

Once you have all this together you need to be able to deploy the code to your Netduino. Deploying the code is easy, simply hit F5 in Visual Studio and that should send it off to your device. From there you can see how well it works.

Here’s a video of the code in action on my Netduino Go, I’ll see if I can’t get another video done when I get the third LED module in place (only 2 for now).

For another overview and tutorial check out Pete’s blog post over on 10rem.net

UPDATE

I've updated the code to work with 3 RGB LED modules, you can find the updated code on Github at https://gist.github.com/2418912 

Here's an updated video, filmed using a GoPro, let me know what you think of the video quality.

Riding from Parker to Denver in Colorado

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 06:56:06 GMT

This post is a couple of weeks late, my fault, I know, been a busy time getting caught up from my trip, taking another trip, and planning a trip later this month. While I was in the Denver area I managed to rent a bike thanks to a friend (via twitter), and decided I wanted to go for a couple of long bike rides.

Throughout the week I spent time looking at Google Maps and Strava to try to figure out what route I was going to ride. I had already planned to meet up with Joel from www.reasons2ride.com, so I wanted to find a route that worked out well with a place to meet him.

I settled on a ride from Parker Colorado, north up the Cherry Creek trail, connecting west to the C-470 trail, out to the Mary Carter Greenway Trail north, connecting to the South Platte River trail (going north). From there the plan was to hear into Denver to the SAME Café, run by friends of mine.

This route was going to be around 40 miles each way, longer in one direction than I’ve ever ridden, so I was half worried that making it back to Parker might be an issue, so I had an out, a shorter way back leaving SAME Café and heading to the Cherry Creek trail, which would have cut about 16 miles off the return route.

Friday after work, I was in Denver for the week providing custom DotNetNuke Training to a client, I stopped by the Littleton Bicycle Village store to pick up my rental bike that @Im_a_cyclepath hook

Day 4 of 30 Days of Biking

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 04:07:20 GMT

Another weak day for Day 4 of #30DaysOfBiking. It is a busy week, too much going on, road trip to Temecula for Easter. We’re taking the bikes though, so hopefully Friday we’ll get a long ride in while the baby spends time with grandparents.

Here’s the strava ride.

Day 3 of 30 Days of Biking, Karma Strikes Back

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 03:43:32 GMT

Here we are, day 3 into 30 days of biking (the month known as April). I came home from the office early today, left at 5pm, missing the Bay Area DotNetNuke User’s Group meeting (www.baydug.org). I stopped by the lbs (www.bikeworkshmb.com)  to see what they might have in terms of a road bike for my wife, she’s 5’10” tall so that pretty much rules out most “women’s” bikes, so I figured I would see what they had in a 56cm or so in men’s. They had a couple of lower end Specialized Allez, similar to mine, but with lower end components.

Unfortunately they don’t appear to have much else right now, but I did figure out that they offer fitting services, so we will likely be scheduling that here in the next couple of weeks. I think she needs a 56cm, but I think we would be better off knowing for sure before buying.

Pro Tip: If you visit Bike Works go upstairs, they have stuff up there too!

After getting home I decided to just rest and take it easy, watch some TV before the wife and baby got home. I thought about riding, but decided that my sick body wasn’t yet up to a long ride. I’ve been fighting off a cold for two weeks, and this past weekend it struck me down, lots of coughing the past few days, I think I still have both lungs, but am not sure.

After dinner I gave the baby a bath, side note: some how I have been tricked into this duty each night, for 1.6 years I managed to avoid it! (to be honest, I enjoy bath time playing around with Jacqueline, so I can’t complain).

Once the baby was down I decided I should at least get out and ride a little bit around the neighborhood to have some actual riding for Day 3 of 30 Days of Biking.

This is when karma struck, in the form of rain. None

Day 2 of 30 days of biking 2012

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 03:51:42 GMT

So Day 2 is the day I actually remembered about 30 Days of Biking, fortunately we managed to ride yesterday, for Day 1. Today I had to work. After work I came home and took Jacqueline out for a quick spin.

Unfortunately the bike seat for the baby won’t fit on my Cannondale CX, so I rode Natalie’s bike around a bit. The baby loves it, she points, talks, and is downright happy when riding around on the bike.

We didn’t ride far, just around the neighborhood a few times to get 2 miles in, but we rode 2 more miles than I planned when I got up this morning!

Here’s the Strava data.

Day 1 of 30 days of biking 2012

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 03:46:31 GMT

I can’t believe I forgot about this, but fortunately I was able to get ride in for Day 1 of 30 Days of Biking 2012. http://30daysofbiking.com/ What? 30 days of biking? Isn’t Toddler366 enough for you Chris? No, it isn’t.

So what is 30 Days of Biking? Well, plain and simple, bicycling at least once, every day, in April 2012. Why? Why not. Biking is good for you, the more you do it, the better you feel, the better shape you are in.

How much will you be riding? That depends on my schedule. Some days it will just be a quick ride around the neighborhood, some days I’ll get in multiple rides. Hopefully every day I will get at least one ride in though, even if it is short.

The difficult part for me is that I am likely going to be travelling to the east coast at the end of the month, and getting a ride in with that may prove hard, though I may try to ride a couple of times, even if short, with my good buddy Stephen Jones from www.velonation.com, but we’ll see how that comes along.

With each ride, assuming I ride with my Garmin, I will post up my Strava report from the ride. So here is Day 1’s ride.

Yesterday morning we headed off to REI to see what we might find at the Garage Sale. We didn’t plan on buying anything, but we had never been, so we went with open minds. Well, we scored. We ended up getting the Bicycle Riding in Colorado, Group Ride!

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 03:42:01 GMT

I am heading to Colorado next week for work, a week of onsite DotNetNuke Training in the state that is my former, if short lived, home. I booked my flights with the intention of staying over the weekend after working, so that I could go hit the slopes. It has been two years since I’ve been on my snowboard, and I was hoping to get back on it.

I made plans to go snowboarding this week here in Northern California, so that I could get the rust off here, before hitting the slopes in Colorado, but those plans fell apart today. Because of that I’ve decided to not bother with taking the snowboard to Colorado, and instead started making plans to get some bicycle miles in while I am out there.

Denver’s DotNetNuke User Group Meeting 3/21/2012

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 23:09:17 GMT

It has been two years since I moved from Denver, CO to San Mateo California to work for DotNetNuke Corporation, (3/1/2010) and I am finally headed back to Colorado! This time I am not staying permanently, though I know very much that I will be tempted to.

I’ll be presenting at the Denver DotNetNuke User’s Group meeting on Wednesday, March 21st, 2012, at 6pm, here is the pertinent info. This is their first meeting since March 2010, though it should be the first of many to come.

Date: 3/21/2012 6pm
Location:
Wellington E. Webb Building.
 201 W. Colfax ave. Denver Co 80202 
(Conference Room 1.D.1, enter on the Court street side of the building)

Topic: An Introduction to DotNetNuke 6.2 and Using the Journal API
Description: With the forthcoming release of DotNetNuke 6.2 there are a number of changes coming to the platform. Chris will present an overview of some of these changes in the first half of this session, then will spend the latter half of the presentation showing you how your own custom modules and extensions can implement the new Journal API to create a Facebook like effect within your DotNetNuke web site.

Details at http://denver.dnnug.com/news/itemId/44/Jump-start-Denver-DNN-user-group.aspx

I’ll have plenty of DotNetNuke Swag at the meeting to give away, but you need to be there in order to get it!

After the meeting: I’m actually in town all week for DotNetNuke Training for a customer. I am going to stay around through the weekend, if anyone wants to get some snowboarding in let me know! I haven’t hit the slopes since I left Colorado in 2010 and am ready to get back out there.

I’m bad at learning, time for change

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 08:27:16 GMT

This week I started reading a new book. It is a book from a course I took in college. I left the book at the office today (mistakenly) so I can’t tell you the title of the book, but basically the book is about programming language design. I noticed that while reading it, it is like I am reading it for the very first time. To be honest, it probably is the first time I’ve read the book. I couldn’t even tell you what course it is for, or when I took that course in college, though I can probably guess the outcome of me taking it, I likely dropped the course.

I don’t know when I became a bad student, but I can tell you, I am a bad student. I don’t think I ever really learned how to study. In grade school, middle school, and high school, I didn’t have to study. I took AP classes, was enrolled in an IB program my freshman year (before moving to Indiana where it wasn’t offered), I was considered bright.

I got good grades, played football my final two years of HS (or watched mostly from the sidelines), played tennis one year, golf one year, was in band all throughout. Up through 12th grade school was easy, if anything I think the only class I really struggled with as Calculus. After high school everything changed.

I started college in 1995, planning on getting a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Missouri – Rolla (UMR) (now known as Missouri University of Science and Technology, MST). I struggled at Rolla. I joined a fraternity, I met a girl, I went to class, I discovered this new thing called the Internet (this was in 1995, before going to college all I was exposed to was Prodigy).

While at Rolla, I did okay in some classes, and poorly most others. Towards the end of my time there I was dropping half of the credit hours I was taking each semester, and not doing great in the classes I remained in. Needless to say I didn’t do well at UMR, after 4 years of school, with one semester off to work, I left Rolla and decided I was going to work full time and go to school part time.

I moved to St. Louis, lived with my parents for 6 or 7 months, until they up and moved to South Carolina. I stayed in St. Louis, took a few CS classes here or there at UMSL, but struggled in those as well, working full time wasn’t conducive to me getting good grades. Eventually I took a year or two away from classes at UMSL, but I talked myself into going back and meeting with a counselor to figure out what I could do to finish. We looked at my transcripts, and figured out what I needed to do to finish. With 110 or some odd credits under my belt, in order for me to get a BS in Computer Science at that point in time I needed another 70 credits, a lofty number at the rate I was taking classes.

We looked at switching to an MIS degree, that wasn’t that much better, maybe 63 credits remaining. Ultimately we figured out that I could get an economics degree in just 36 more credit hours, I had to take 6 hours of humanities (not something that Rolla had in the requirements) and then 30 hours of economics. I had taken two economics courses during my time at Rolla, they came easy, so I thought, what the heck, 30 hours of econ and I’ll have that degree I need (as in I wanted to complete A degree, which one wasn’t that important to me).

I think around 2006 I started taking UMSL seriously again, taking 2 classes in the evenings during the week so that I could get the credits I needed out of the way. I did fairly well in my studies at UMSL in Econ, better than I had done in CS at either UMSL or UMR. In May 2011 I was officially done, I completed my Bachelor of Science in Economics from the University of Missouri – St. Louis. I was rather proud of finishing. Did it change anything? The only thing it changed is I can now officially say I am a college graduate, not one other thing.

But here we are today, March 1st, 2012, I’m a college graduate, I have a good job, a wonderful wife, a beautiful daughter. But I still am a bad student.

A couple of weeks (months?) ago the CEO of DotNetNuke Corporation gave a presentation to some employees about learning. Pushing yourself to spend 30 minutes a day learning. After school, you really don’t do that, or at least most people I know don’t. I know I haven’t pushed myself to learn anything outside the scope of DotNetNuke in many years.

It is time to finally change that. I want to learn, I need to learn, about what? Everything. For now, I’m going back to my computer science dreams, I’m going to read the books I have on my bookshelf. I’m going to learn things outside of my current comfort zone. To start off I am learning how to build and program hardware. I’ve been working on the web since 1995, it is time to break into the real world.

I’ve dabbled in that a bit already, I’ve been working on a project that we call DNNFoos (www.dnnfoos.com) a black box that is used to keep track of the score of foosball games. I’ve been building and testing and debugging the project for a few weeks now, and I am now at the point where I need to learn more to make it work reliably. I need to learn threading, I need to learn how to write code that fits on a Netduino and doesn’t throw out of memory exception errors. Now is the time.

After that? Who knows, maybe I’ll learn a new language. That could be rather useful living in California where 43% of the population speaks another language at home (census stats)

What are you going to learn today?

Using jQuery popups in DotNetNuke 6

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:29:46 GMT

If you follow me on twitter (@christoc) or read my personal blog, facebook, or google+ you likely have seen that I am riding for 100 miles on a bicycle charity in June of this year. If you didn’t know that, check out the Philanthropy page on ChrisHammond.com.

As part of my fund raising efforts for the event I decided to try and use my website a bit more to see if I could raise some additional funds. The website gets a decent amount of search referrals to the site on a daily basis (it should, I’ve been blogging there since July 2004 so it has almost 2600 posts). I had a couple of ways I wanted to utilize the website, the first was as a way to keep track of my fundraising efforts.

500 miles in 2011? 500 Miles in 2012

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 06:27:21 GMT

So my goal for 2011 was to hit 500 miles, I started in early June and hit it around the end of November, I thought that was pretty good. Well if that was good for a big guy like me, 2012 is going to be kickass! I hit 500 miles on the bike today for 2012, with 2 days left to spare in February.

In January I did 256 miles, and for February I’ve done 245. Of those 501 miles I’ve climbed around 20930 feet, with 11,417 of that coming in February, and 3k of that coming on my ride up Tunitas Creek last weekend.

Pushing Pixels in the DotNetNuke Ecosystem Principles of DotNetNuke Skin Design–March 6, 2012 Bay Area User Group

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 21:36:59 GMT

For the March meeting of the Bay Area DotNetNuke User’s Group (3/6/12)at the DotNetNuke World Headquarters Adam Humphrey from Adammer LLC will be presenting “Pushing Pixels in the DotNetNuke Ecosystem Principles of DotNetNuke Skin Design”

You must RSVP via Meetup.com

Team LIVESTRONG Challenge Fundraising Update 2/22/12

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 07:38:14 GMT

The following is an update email that went out to everyone who has donated to my LIVESTRONG fundraising. Wait, you haven’t donated yet? That’s okay, there is still time, head on over to my Philanthropy page and get started.

I wanted to send out a quick thank you to everyone who has donated to my ride for the 2012 Team LIVESTRONG Challenge in Davis. With your help I have already surpassed 50% of my initial goal for fundraising for the ride, I will likely be raising that goal to a larger amount here over the next few months, due in part to your very kind donations.

Year to date riding

I've been riding a lot here over the past couple of months as I try to get my body prepared for a 100 mile bike ride. I've been able to ride three, sometimes 4 days a week just about every week in 2012. In 2011 I rode around 580 miles total for the year, so far this year I am up to 458 miles, I should hit 500 before the end of the month, and if I keep this pace up (it will likely just increase) I should easily exceed 1000 miles before the Challenge on 6/24/2012.

Fundraising efforts

As part of my efforts to increase my fundraising for LIVESTRONG I have been making some changes to the Philanthropy page of my website (http://www.chrishammond.com/philanthropy.aspx) and have decided to include a list of everyone who has donated.

Your name in lights (get a link)

As an added bonus for donating, I am also adding a link with your name, pointing to the website of your choice (within reason of course). Please feel free to email me a link that you would like associated with your name on the Donor list and I will gladly add it to the site.

You've been ranked

On that Donor list I am currently listing of the donors in descending order of the donation amounts. If you are at the top, that's because you've donated the most. If you want to move to the top? Well, you could always donate more.

If you would rather not be included in that ranked list, or even included in the list of donors at all, please let me know and I will remove your name.

Tell a friend

Now that you've donated, perhaps you have a friend who might be interested in donating? If so, send them to the following website: http://www.chrishammond.com/philanthropy.aspx

Future emails

If you would rather not be included in future status emails please let me know, otherwise I will occasionally send out emails like this updating everyone on how things are progressing.

Once again, thank you for taking the time and effort to donate to the cause, no matter how little or big your donation is it is all greatly appreciated.

Chris Hammond

Riding in the LIVESTRONG Challenge Davis 2012

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 05:58:15 GMT

This year I said one of my goals is to ride in a century, a 100 mile bike ride. I’ve chosen the LIVESTRONG Challenge in Davis California on June 24, 2012.

As part of the ride I have set a goal to raise $1,000. You can donate to my campaign at http://laf.livestrong.org/goto/chrishammond

All I am asking is that you donate $5 (more if you like) to the cause. Just $5 to help people around the world effected by Cancer. Below is more info on why I am riding in the LIVESTRONG Challenge this year.

My Story

I am riding the 105 mile distance at the 2012 Team LIVESTRONG Challenge Davis for four special people in my life, all affected by cancer. As part of the event I have set a goal of raising $1,000, I would appreciate any amount that you can donate to my cause, you can use the link on the left side of this page to DONATE NOW.

Who am I riding for?

I am riding the #LSCDavis for four people, all affected by cancer.

My father Bill was diagnosed with Prostate Cancer in August 2011, he had treatment for the cancer in November 2011 and we are hopeful that it was caught early enough to be eradicated by the treatment. (Photo right with my daughter Jacqueline on her first birthday 10/9/2011)

My uncle John, married to my father's sister, has been battling cancer for a number of years now.

My auntie Carol was diagnosed with breast cancer and successfully beat the disease.

One of my best friend's mother Janice was very recently diagnosed with breast cancer and is going through the treatment process now.

These close friends and family are my motivation for doing the LIVESTRONG Challenge in Davis this year. As of January of 2012 the longest bike ride I've ever done was 30.3 miles, that was in August 2011. If all goes as planned, I will surpass that total multiple times this year. Please stay tuned to my training and ride results by checking out the LIVESTRONG blog posts here no my site.

BSP 350z Suspension Parts and Exhaust for Sale

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 04:59:54 GMT

Alright the time has come to part with the parts. I took some time this evening to take photographs of what I have and what I am trying to sell. Right now I am trying to sell everything locally so prices don’t include any shipping. If I don’t have any interest locally I’m willing to ship the coilovers/springs/shocks but only as a package.

Sway bars and the exhaust are way too much of a hassle to try to ship, so those are local only. (Local in the San Francisco Bay Area, if you’re somewhere else in California and want to drive here, feel free).

Cash Only, no checks. Paypal acceptable for a hold, but cash must be delivered in full before handover of the parts. All parts located in Half Moon Bay, contact me at z – at – christoc.com for more info.

All parts are sold as is, with no warranty, and unknown mileage. I can tell you I put about 10k on each of them (except the control arms and the Cobb bar), but am not sure what they had prior to me.

Shit Cyclists Say the video

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 19:00:15 GMT

Waking up late this morning, missing the opportunity to ride due to weather, I logged into Facebook and came across this great video that was posted today.

Being new into bicycling I can honestly say that I don't say much of these things yet, but I yearn for the day

This video was put together by PeopleForBikes.org be sure to check out their website.

Adding a hyperlink to an Image (IMG) with jQuery

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 07:38:33 GMT

While spending a bit of time this weekend working on a new color scheme for ChrisHammond.com I came across the need to be able to add a hyperlink to an image (html IMG tag) using jquery. Why would I want to do that? Well, to be honest I didn’t want to go in and modify the “skin” on my DotNetNuke site, but I did want to create a link on the “HeaderGraphic” image in the skin. Originally that image didn’t link anywhere, now, as I am working on fundraising for the The LIVESTRONG Challenge Davis even on June 24, 2012, I wanted to link that graphic to my “Philanthropy” page.

Doing this in jQuery is rather easy to do assuming you have a way to target the element, in this case I can target the .HeaderGraphic class (part of the MultiFunction skin for DotNetNuke).

Here is the sample code for adding a hyperlink to an image using jQuery.

In order to safely embed this into a DotNetNuke page I’ve added it into the Header setting in the Module Settings for one of the modules at the bottom. That particular module is configured to Display On All pages using the module settings.

If you found this code to be help, I ask that you please donate to my cause on the Philanthropy page. Donate what you feel is appropriate.

Cannondale Quick CX 1 with mountain bike tires

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 08:16:27 GMT

Last year I purchased a 2011 Cannondale Quick CX 1 to start riding on my quest to hit 500 miles for the year. I was able to do that fairly easily on the bike, it is a great machine.

As I am getting more into riding though I wanted to do longer distance road riding, and continue to use the Quick CX 1, but on a different basis than I did in 2011. I intended to take that bike, with the OEM wheels, and put a set of mountain bike tires on it and use it as a semi mountain bike trail bike.

My awesome brother sent me a set of 29x2.1” mountain bike tires, and I picked up some tubes at REI a few weeks ago. This evening I tried to put the tires on the rim, the first thing I ran into was thinking that there was no way the tire would mount to the rim, it looked huge with the likely hood of it fitting being very small.

Well I was wrong about that, the tire and tube went together well and everything fit on the rim nicely. That is when it went downhill though. I put the wheel on the bike and immediately noticed it wouldn’t rotate, I figured I had the quick release off and the disc brake was rubbing. Upon further inspection though, after resetting the quick release I noticed that the tire was actually rubbing on the top of the fork. Here’s a picture of the original tire and fork, taken after removing the MTB tire and tube.

So I guess the answer to the question, if the question is “Will a 29x2.1” tire fit on a 2011 Cannondale Quick CX 1?” is NO. Unfortunately it will not.

I’m still going to try to find something that will work on the bike though, I would like to use it off road more, though I don’t think I’m ready to invest in a full on mountain bike anytime soon as I still see putting in a lot more road miles this year.

Part 7: CommunityServer to DotNetNuke handling URLs

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:59:27 GMT

So this is Part 7 of my CommunityServer to DotNetNuke blog series, unfortunately it is well over 7 months late, but better late than never I say. This will be a quick blog post talking about “URLs” and how you can handle the old CommunityServer URLs and redirect them to the proper DotNetNuke URLs. Why would you do this? SEO, bookmarks and existing links. You want people that try to access the CS urls to be redirected properly to the appropriate DotNetNuke URL, be it for a forum post, blog post, or other. This post isn’t going to cover all the specifics, as there are too many possible variations based on the configuration of your specific website, but hopefully it will provide you an overview of how I handled things in my conversion, and get you on the way to handling them in your conversion.

Video Workflow for GoPro HD Hero2 Time Lapse photos

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 07:47:53 GMT

I’ve been one to do a lot of time lapse videos, I’ve actually been doing them since 2006, I think this was my first one, it is at least the oldest one I could find on YouTube. Over the years I have used a number of different cameras, different software and as you can see from my YouTube Channel different subjects (predominantly cars, though lots of them).

Undoing the modifications to the 350z, suspension and exhaust

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 07:00:07 GMT

So what did you do this weekend? Did you spend two days under your car? I basically did, well more like 1 day, but it was broken up over an afternoon/evening and then the following morning after I ran to get a new “nut” that I needed to finish things up.

Why was I under the 350z? Well, removing the fun parts of course. I planned to remove the front and rear Hotchkis sway bars, along with the TrueChoice Phase 4 Konis (front) and the off the shelf Koni Sports (rear) along with springs/perches. Though in order to deal with the rear sway bar I also ended up pulling the Injen Super SES exhaust system off the car as well and put the OEM exhaust back on.

Read the whole blog post for the time lapse video